Finally, something wicked this way comes!

EL ORFANATO (The Orphanage)

Review

BY STEPHANIE MCGUCKIN – steph@ragazine.co.uk

What is it about?
Wife and mother Laura (Beléne Rueda) moves back to the orphanage where she grew up with the intention of reopening it as a home for children with special needs. Unexpectedly, she has an extra brood to care for in the form of son Simón’s imaginary friends.

When Simón goes missing following an encounter with a hideously masked little boy, Laura knows his ‘friends’ were responsible. She quickly realises that in order to retrieve her son from his ghostly abductors, she’ll have to play their game and face her own past of secrets.

Horror’s in the grave, right? And let’s face it; there hasn’t been anything really worthwhile in the last five years to make me pray for the genre’s resurrection.

Sure, the new vein of torture, sex and gore is an indulgent feast for the eyes, but leaves the audience queasy rather than quaking.

So, with critics jumping on the bandwagon of praise for this small time Spanish flick, I decided to put it to the test. Armed with cynicism and a bad mood,

I sat down to what I thought was going to be a trot through the same muck of predictable scares, cardboard characters and a farcical killer.

Thankfully, The Orphanage is a sole survivor of a horror exodus, and brings the genre right into a Renaissance.

Blake’s 7 returning to TV screens

Popular seventies sci-fi Blake’s 7 may be landing back on our screens, almost forty years after its grand finale.

Sky One has commissioned two sixty minute scripts for a potential series, although no production date has been set.

The original Blake’s 7, shown on BBC 1, followed a group of rebels with bad haircuts as they battled a corrupt federation for control of the galaxy, gaining small victories whenever they could.